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KILLING SPREE!!!!!!!

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Killing Spree ~ 1987, Tim Ritter, USA

The man, the myth, the legend- ladies and gentleman, I give you the star of Killing Spree, Mr. Asbestos Felt.

Before we go any further, I need to describe the Asbestos Felt approach to acting. My chosen method for doing this is to use Car metaphors, but full disclosure; I know nothing about cars. OK, so here we go:

In the world of actor/car analogies, Robert DeNiro is sorta like a Rolls Royce. George Clooney would be a Mercedes Benz, and Clint Eastwood is some sort of bad ass Cadillac that still understands how America works. Asbestos Felt, however, would be a Dodge Gremlin, the interior would smell like urine, it would have no doors, and a shattered windshield. It would also be missing three tires, the one tire it did have would somehow be taken off of a monster truck, and the engine is whatever the fuck they put in Indy Cars. Also, the whole car would probably be filled with possums, all of whom are on fire. Simply put, Felt goes fucking hard. While he can’t give you what you need, he can give you a manic, irrational enthusiasm which is almost certain to leave a trail of broken victims in its wake.

Just look at him! He looks like a scarecrow who found a magic lamp, and it’s first wish was to be human, but its second and third wishes were both just for heroin.

But, he’s our boy, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Killing Spree is a true experience, and while it starts so slow that you’ll find yourself expecting it not to live up to all the hype, by the end of the film, it fucking delivers… and then it keeps on delivering, long after your mangled corpse has been abused past the point of recognition.

The Plot: Tom and Leeza are a happily married couple- If by “happily married” you mean inexplicably mismatched and terrifyingly dysfunctional. Their problems all stem from one single root cause; Tom’s old fashioned views on gender equality- and by old fashioned, I mean sociopathic/amish. Leeza isn’t permitted to work. Or really do anything but stay at home. Toms been burned before, you see, so he’s not open to giving Leeza a fucking ounce of freedom, for fear that she’ll up and leave him, and he doesn’t exactly keep a cool head about the whole thing. Even in the face of this controlling, revoltingly unfair treatment, Leeza remains loyal, calm and compassionate, for reasons I cannot begin to imagine. This is not an evenly matched marriage.

Just look at the love.

I mean, WHY would Leeza stay with Tom? She’s utterly gorgeous, and in addition to being controlling and manipulative, Tom looks like a homeless muppet that survived a tornado. What’s the fucking deal?

I mean, level with me; is THIS what women want?!

So, things get worse from here. Despite Tom’s best efforts to Rapunzel his wife away, hidden from the world, he begins to suspect her of infidelity all the same, and his suspicions wind up being aimed at literally every many he can reasonably assume she’s has had contact with ever. This includes a gardener, about a hundred friggin’ repairmen, and even his best friend (a charming old man who’s also a total sleaze-ball).

He’s also a statutory rapist, so maybe doubting his loyalty isn’t such a crazy thing to do after all.

To be fair, Tom’s got his reasons to be suspicious. You see, while lounging about the house one day, our boy finds what he believes to be a journal written by his wife- outlining numerous graphic, sexual encounters between herself and… Well, basically every dude who dares even to approach her. Yep. Pretty damning evidence, I know I’d feel uncomfortable. What he doesn’t know, however, is that this is not a journal, but rather a series of erotic short stories, written by Leeza as a means of exercising her creativity while she’s bored as fuck, toiling away in her house all day. It’s not just for fun, either, Leeza plans is to sell these to an interested publisher, thereby secretly adding an additional income stream to the household, which is meant to help out after Tom’s pay is slashed due to corporate mismanagement. In truth, she is 100% faithful to him, aside from her insistence on bringing in a little bit of money, and what she does she does for the good of their marriage. See, this is why communication is so important in a relationships, without it, blood spattered rampages are almost unavoidable.

This is just a screen grab from the Asbestos Felt episode of MTV Cribs, it’s not even in the movie!

Tragically, Tom would not wait for all the facts before putting into motion his plans for revenge… Awesomely creative revenge. He starts small, but by the end of it he’s kind of the Rembrandt of killing people in broad daylight. It goes without saying that these scenes are the strongest bits in the movie, but there’s other good stuff, too, Like when we get to learn the mysterious origins of a man called “The Stew-Master”.

That’s right, folks, the epic tale of The Stew-master can finally be told.

Who is he?! What does he want!? How could he have come by such a unique accolade? Well, turns out he’s just some dude, and the reason they call him “Stew-master” is because he’s really good at making stew. Yep! It’s pretty much exactly what you’d assume, and it never comes up in the movie again, so the inclusion of this scene defies literally all rational thought. Typically when you’re writing a script, you  make it a point to cut out all the stuff that doesn’t make sense, serve the story, or which kills the pacing… but not with this script. If we were to cut out the bits that didn’t make sense, Killing Spree would simply cease to exist at all. And we can’t have that.

Now, while it’s certainly wacky as fuck, up until this point, Killing Spree has operated more or less within the confines of the revenge/serial killer sub-genre, albeit an atypical one. It would be logical to expect it to continue upon its established trajectory through it’s final act as well, and that’s the biggest reason why you should probably expect it to switch shit up immediately. And it does! In it’s third act, Killing Spree suddenly embarks into uncharted territory and serves us up a helping of zombies, more or less completely out of nowhere and with no explanation. These ghouls (who come with their own enjoyably funky music) are the inexplicably reanimated corpses of Tom’s many undeserving victims, now back from the dead and hungry for vengeance. Oh shit! Hens come home to roost, boys and girls. So, what happens next? Well… I recommend you check the film out and see for yourself. I’ve been told to stop spoiling the end of these movies, so this is all you’re gonna get from me.

Okay, I’ll give you this, too. Spoiler alert- whatever the fuck this is happens. Apparently.

Killing Spree is not a technicality impressive movie. It’s also not an attractive movie… or even a competent one. Does any of that matter to you? This is a splatter film, and the degree to which you enjoy or despise it is entirely dependent on your openness to that brand of low budget, run and gun, shot on video storytelling. Think about it like sushi- if you don’t like sushi, don’t eat it. If you do eat it- I’d imagine you’re not going to like it. Meanwhile, there are plenty of people out there who DO enjoy sushi, and they don’t need to hear you bitch about how gross it is (Full disclosure: I don’t eat sushi. It is gross.) If you’ve managed to stumble across my writing, then odds are you already know how you feel about movies like this, so I suggest you proceed according. For splatter enthusiasts, however there’s a whole second world of options to explore and enjoy, and Killing Spree is a fantastically fun and entertaining example of what’s out there. Every flaw in it is like a generous gift to openly ridicule and enjoy, and these flaws are plentiful, friends. Killing Spree is satisfyingly violent, and frequently hilarious by reason of insanity.

How far away could the next house possibly be that this isn’t going to draw some suspicion? 

This movie was re-released by some unscrupulous distributor with the title I WIll Dance On Your Grave: Killing Spree, in an evident effort to suggest that it was part of the Dance On Your Grave series, themselves something of a degenerate spin-off franchise meant to follow the legendary Video Nasty I Spit On Your Grave. This association is dubious as balls, ladies and gentlemen, and even worse is the tagline on the poster they used, which read:  “Better Run For Your Life, There’s A Babe With A Knife!”

…Yeah… And that babe is this guy:

“You just got Felt, bitches!”

Anyway. The posters for the Dance On Your Grave release of the film are still pretty solid.

Something about this does appeal to me more than Asbestos Felt does, if I’m being honest.

Highly recommended!

B+

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Burial Ground!!!

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Burial Ground: The Nights Of Terror ~ 1981, Andrea Bianchi, Italy

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Burial Ground is a film about a lot of things… It’s a film about overcoming adversity, it’s a film about confronting the past, it’s a film about survival… but mostly it’s a movie where a full grown man plays a child who really wants to bang his mom. Yep. Now, granted, this is a very small man, but he’s definitely an adult human being, and not a child by any stretch of the imagination. And again, as I mentioned a moment ago, he really, really wants to have sex with his mom, and the reason why any of that was included in this film remains shrouded forever in mystery and lost to time. This is a movie where rotting corpses rise from their graves to tear human beings apart and devour their flesh, and none of that is even one tenth as creepy as this fucking kid/mom/incest subplot. 

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Plus, he looks like that.

burial-ground-nights-of-terror-1981-10THE PLOT~ When some professor/archeologist/whatever type guy removes an engraved plate from an ancient ruin, he unwittingly triggers a centuries old curse that reanimates the dead and imperils every lusty Italian in the immediate area. What a dumb ass, huh? Meanwhile, our cast of totally forgettable characters all arrive at the beautiful, stately Italian villa which may or may not belong to the aforementioned professor, and which also appears to be on the same property as this ancient tomb for some reason, for a weekend of aggressive sex in as many locations as possible, as often as possible. Solid plan. Sadly, none of these idiots is yet aware that the zombie apocalypse is upon them, so they only get in about fourteen or fifteen sex scenes before the place is just crawling with ghouls and everyone is forced to switch to survival mode. From there it’s your typical Night of the Living Dead style survival zombie film, they barricade, they fight, they die, the end. It’s actually pretty fun!

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Burial Ground is a rip off, and no buts about it. If you read the plot blurb above, the you already know that these guys watched Romero’s contributions a time or two, but this flick is also clearly indebted to Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, at one point even going so far as to directly copy of one of that film’s most memorable eyeball related gore gags. Even so, in watching Burial Ground, you’re more likely to be reminded of Jean Rollin’s Grapes of Death, or even the uber-shabby mummy/zombie mash up Dawn of the Mummy, as Burial Ground is tonally dissimilar to the work of either Romero or Fulci.

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I actually sort of love it it. The make up effects are truly terrible, but the music is really great. It’s much more ambient and freeform than the synth scores you would get from Goblin or Fabio Frizzi, but it suits this film excellently. Burial Ground is also super pleasant visually, whoever managed to acquire this location for the film should be given a freakin’ trophy, because it probably saved the movie in the end. The grounds and house are both beautiful, and do more to push this film in the arty/poetic direction that Rollin has on lock than any other element in the mix by far. That’s not to say that the movie feels anywhere near as poetic as the work of Jean Rollin, and truthfully, it doesn’t want to be, which is okay. The proof is in the pudding, and Burial Ground is very forthcoming about its intentions; it wants to entertain, and deliver. In this film we don’t waste any time with plot, character development, or really anything that takes too much mental energy. Instead, we get zombies; we get them fast, and in as much abundance as is available, and to hold us over while we wait the scant few minutes it takes to fetch our wobbling ghouls, we are compensated with liberal doses of naked Italians gettin’ busy. Folks, Burial Ground isn’t here to judge. Burial Ground knows what you want, and you don’t have to pretend with Burial Ground. Burial Ground isn’t the kind of movie you take home to mother, but it’s the kind of movie you meet in a back alley when you really need a fix.

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VIDEO NASTY BREAKDOWN

Yep! is also made the list of gnarly flicks which raised the English Ire back in the rough and tumble 1980’s! So, how does it compare to all the other films it tries so very hard to imitate? Pretty damn well, actually. Burial Ground has lots of footage of people having their guts fondled and yanked out by grizzled old zombies, but it also has a few memorable gags and scenes that stick out to the viewer; such as a somewhat elaborate sequence involving a dart and a scythe. More than anything else, what probably put Burial Ground on the map for both British Censors and psychotronic film fans is its puzzling inclusion of the aforementioned incest subplot, as well as the hardcore off-putting choice of casting a full grown man to play the role of Michael, who is supposed to be the child in question. We’re pretty much forced to assume that the biggest reason behind these decisions was that it was one more way to jazz the film up with sensational content that was smutty, and which felt markedly inappropriate, both traditionally seen as desirable traits for Italian Genre films. In the end no matter how you feel about the movie, Michael’s horrifyingly wrong relationship with his mother makes Burial Ground difficult to forget, and it also adds a lot of weight to later scenes in the film, wherein we learn the fate of young(?) Michael. Burial Ground’s blood and gore isn’t quite as over the top as some other films in the Video Nasty lexicon, but it hits home, because Burial Ground doesn’t work hard- it works smart. And by smart, I mean they cast an adult man as a child who wants to bang his mom, and then we see his corpse being eaten, and it’s super bloody and I love it. You probably will, too.burial10

It also has one of the most bleak and nihilistic endings of any zombie film ever, which is quite a statement indeed. Suffice to say, nobody survives this one, and we end with a freeze frame, followed by this text (spelling errors included):

 

 

“The Earth Shall Tremble…
Graves Shall Open…
They Shall Come Among the Living as Messengers of Death and there shall be the Nights of Terror…

Profecy of the Black Spider.”

DAMN! That’s the most metal shit I’ve ever heard in my LIFE. So, yeah, if you want to know more about The Black Spider and whatever his deal was, then be my guest and google that shit. Meanwhile, this is a pretty amazing way to end a zombie movie, and I don’t even know if that caption is bogus or not. I really don’t care. At the end of the day, Burial Ground pretty much delivers in the same way that junk food does, it’s not good for you, but if that’s what you wanted, you wouldn’t have bought those Cheetos in the first place.

A-

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CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST!

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Cannibal Holocaust~ Ruggero Deodato, 1980, Italy

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The roughest, gnarliest, most controversial Video Nasty of them all is inarguably this one; Ruggero Deodato’s gory ass cannibal milestone Cannibal Holocaust, the king of cannibal cinema, and an early example of the found footage format in motion pictures. It’s 36 years old, and at the time of my writing this, it remains every bit the gut wrenchingly disturbing sleazefest it was when it was first unleashed. There’s just something so timeless about shameless, irresponsible degradation and filth… At least, that’s what I like to tell myself.

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This is as wholesome and uplifting as this film gets.

Legends abound about what transpired behind the camera during this production, with many reports painting director Deodato as a cruel, abusive puppet master who manipulated and tortured his actors and crew. There’s also speculation about some of the dead bodies in the film being genuine (there’s some truth to that, by the way), and much like what happened with Snuff (another notorious video nasty) Deodato did in fact have to produce his actors, alive and well, before the authorities to prove that their onscreen deaths were, in fact, simulated. It’s true that audiences were easier to dupe in 1980, but even today the ample gore effects in Cannibal Holocaust hold up incredibly well, and the film remains visceral enough to satisfy contemporary splatter fans as much as it ever did. If you’re looking to subject yourself to the foulest, most gruesome cinema ever made, then Cannibal Holocaust is a movie you can’t afford to skip. A word to the wise, however, do not go into Cannibal Holocaust if you harbor any sensitivity of any kind. This is advanced level shit. Cannibal Holocaust boasts not only graphic blood and violence of the most aggressive sort, it also contains explicit sexual violence, as well as the on screen killing, torture, and mutilation of live animals, all of which is actual, not simulated. Because of this, it’s difficult to watch Cannibal Holocaust objectively, as the film seems to demand a morally motivated response separate from an assessment of its merit as a film. Frankly, this movie is just not suitable for most audiences, and even those who appreciate it will often condemn it at the same time. In truth, Cannibal Holocaust is only one of many films in the Spanish/Italian Cannibal genre, and nearly all of these feature the same sort of content. The only real difference is that Cannibal Holocaust is much better than most of these, and therefore, drastically more effective.

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THE PLOT~ When a group of documentary filmmakers on assignment in the Amazon goes missing, Professor Harold Monroe somehow concludes that going after them isn’t a terrible idea. He departs, and somehow manages to find them, although they are predictably dead as fuck, which leaves Monroe with the consolation prize of returning to civilization with reel after reel of raw, undeveloped film shot by the crew before they met their grisly end. After developing this footage, we slowly piece together the truth; our missing filmmakers were, in fact, total douchebags, who antagonized the fuck out of the locals, and acted like the Amazon was some sort of perverse theme park designed by Caligula.  Again and again, they engage in acts of deplorable violence and degradation, even going to far as raping local girls and setting fire to villages just to get some exciting footage. With this added context, we don’t feel sorry for our film crew at all, even though we watch them die in graphic, and awesome ways. I don’t use the word “awesome” lightly, this part of the movie really is fantastic, and honestly, the murder of these buttholes is more than justified. I mean, what took these cannibals so long? They’re way more tolerant than I am. WAY more. I’d have killed them like, an hour after they showed up.

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Those are some guts, I guess.

Nowhere else is the cannibal film’s hereditary roots in Mondo cinema more apparent than Cannibal Holocaust. The found footage format helps to display its close relation movies like Mondo Cane, Africa Addio, and Mondo Magic (among others), and it may be that bond that helped to give this film the impact it had back in 1980. It does have a documentary feel much of the time, with strategic use of steadicam and compositions that feel impromptu, lending a raw and authentic feel to the film’s grisliest sequences. It’s easy to see why this was confusing to audiences who were less accustomed to having to apply scrutiny to the films they viewed. Even today, the film is certainly quite effective, even outside of the violent sequences. Cannibal Holocaust feels well made, but still totally without polish of any kind, there’s just something inherently wild about the film.

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Another crucial ingredient that helps to make Cannibal Holocaust as effective as it is is it’s score. While 90% of the onscreen visuals are natural landscapes, the music is a strange, haunting synth score, which was very much the fashion in 1980’s Euro Cinema. Here, however, that stylistic choice is profoundly effective, the most feels sterile, and almost alien at times, further emphasizing how foreign and unsafe the environment in Cannibal Holocaust is. It’s hard to know how much of this was deliberate or conscious, as well as to what degree it would have been noticeable to an audience in 1980, but to audiences today, the combination is fantastically off-putting.

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Overall, Cannibal Holocaust is a remarkably difficult film, not just to watch, but to process. Perhaps more than any other subgenre, the cannibal films of the European 80’s seem to demand a moral response, because of the nature of their sensational content. From an objective standpoint, it’s patently ridiculous to suggest that Cannibal Holocaust isn’t a masterpiece. It’s an incredibly effective horror film that will likely remain potent and unnerving decades longer than contemporary films of the era. Its nigh Herzogian production makes it fascinating and engrossing, and deliberate attempts to top the onscreen sleaze and violence on display here still routinely fail more than 36 years later. But then one has to acknowledge the unsavory actions taken by the cast and crew in their irresponsible quest for onscreen sensationalism, and it becomes quite difficult not to condemn Cannibal Holocaust in much the same way you would Clownhouse, or even (to a lesser extent) Pulgasari. Cannibal Holocaust, therefore, almost requires two assessments… Morally, I’d say this is super fucked up. As a film? Sort of a masterpiece.

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A+

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ANTHROPOPHAGUS!!!!

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Anthropophagus~ Joe D’Amato, 1980, Italy

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Anthropophagus is totally awesome… But, oddly enough, this opinion is not a universally acknowledged.

LIke it’s director Joe D’Amato, Anthropophagus is quite well known, but not necessarily well liked. In his time, D’Amato would have been overjoyed come in third in any race, but the truth is, he was never anyone’s favorite Italian genre director, he was always just sort of around. He churned out plenty of pictures, however, and while his body of work has it’s share of stinkers, there are a few real goodies, as well. Take this one, for instance; Here, in Anthropophagus, we have a film maker with very little at his disposal, but who looked at the tools he had, identified which ones were truly valuable, and then stretched the shit out of these resources until they were damn near maxed out to hell and back. These efforts are not wasted; Anthropophagus shakes what it’s momma gave it, and its milkshake truly does brings all the boys to the yard. Get ready for a gross, gross movie.

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THE PLOT~ A quaint, sparsely populated Greek Island is transformed into a gore strewn hell on Earth when a shipwrecked family man turned blood thirsty cannibal washes up on it’s shores, only to then slaughter and gobble down every man woman and child in sight (except for two, who are apparently really good at hiding.) Inconveniently, our group of happy-go-lucky travelers have chosen the worst possible time to visit this scenic, Mediterranean locale for their vacation getaway, and by the time they discover that something it’s truly, terrible wrong, it’s too late, and they find themselves stuck on the island with no way to communicate with the outside world, and no choice but to square off in a violent struggle not to be some swarthy Greek dude’s lunch. It doesn’t say anywhere that this is based on a true story, but damn, I really want it to be.

MV5BMTY2MjExOTk1M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwNzI3OTM5._V1_SX640_SY720_Regardless, It’s a great idea for a story, and from the very beginning of the film, it’s clear that D’Amato wants to build mood and atmosphere, even if his threadbare production feels woefully outmatched by the more sophisticated operations his peers were conducting at the time. When people think of Italian horror films in the 1980’s, one of the stylistic traits that all of these movies seem to have are their sophisticated, jazzy lighting setups, and that’s one thing you’ll notice is absent from Anthropophagus immediately. D’Amato appears to be relying on natural light whenever possible, and when that option isn’t available to him, his fallbacks seem to range from the shitty, to a fucking flashlight. His exterior landscape shots are fantastic, but much of the film feels woefully flat, even if the flashlight gags are fairly endearing. Still, in true Anthropophagus tradition, he milks what is working for him as furiously as possible, and we are treated to some great photography of coastal villages, stately manors, and rad ass Greek tombs, so the visuals here do occasionally deliver, they just don’t “Argento-Deliver.”anthrop5

Almost certainly the greatest asset Anthropophagus has at its disposal, however, is reliable old George Eastman, who both co-wrote the film along with D’Amato, and stars as the titular cannibal. Eastman will be a familiar face to fans of 80’s Euro-shlock, but he’s never been better utilized in a film than he is here. This movie goes the extra mile to make its monster scary, and part of that is taking full advantage of Eastman’s tall, imposing physique. Another part of it is making him look fucking gross and including plenty of sequences where he tears people apart and eats them on camera, both of which are wise choices for a low budget horror film. This is a slasher where the killer doesn’t just kill you, he damn eats you, on the spot, raw. Not even Leatherface is that hardcore! Even with the film’s many shortcomings, the handling of Eastman as the monster is done so well that I would call Anthropophagus a reasonable creepy film, every bit as scary as anything Fulci ever shot, even with it’s clumsy production and irritatingly lame soundtrack. The reveal of Eastman in all his gross glory is a particular highlight that was executed fantastically well, for example.

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VIDEO NASTY BREAKDOWN

Since this is one of the better known Video Nasties, one would be well within their rights to wonder just where Anthropophagus lands of the “obscene piece of filth” scale. Well, the answer is that it fits in quite well, but it doesn’t exactly lead the pack. There’s no onscreen nudity or sex to speak of, an oddity indeed in those days, and there are actually plenty of long, drawn out sequences throughout the film which are fairly slow. These calm, quiet moments, however, are often punctuated with over the top sequences of graphic murder and/or cannibalism, because Anthropophagus is still plenty gross when it wants to be. It’s not at all surprising that this film pissed off the British so much, while it doesn’t match other cannibal nasties, such as Cannibal Holocaust or Cannibal Ferox, it does boast a few of the most memorable moments in the entire Video Nasty cycle. (OFFENSIVE CONTENT WARNING! Are you sensitive? Skip the rest of this paragraph. We’ll both be happier.) One particularly notorious gag has the killer forcibly removing the fetus from a dead pregnant woman, and then eating it in front of the father. Another features a defeated Anthropophagus eating its own intestines as one last defiant gesture of disdain for humanity, before finally collapsing, dead as dubstep. This is strong shit to be sure.images

Overall, this has been one of my favorite Video Nasties from a very early point. If you’re exploring this collection of cinematic malcontents, don’t skip this one. It’s almost certainly among D’Amato’s best efforts, and for all its clunkiness, absolutely worth a watch.

Anthropophagous2000NOTE: I’m not the only dude who loved this movie, Anthropophagus also got an unofficial remake some years back, in the form of Anthropophagous 2000, a shot on video splatter flick helmed by none other than Andreas Schnaas, the German turd merchant responsible for such brutal shitshows as Nikos the Impaler and the Violent Shit trilogy. Knowing anything about Schnass or his work should clue you in immediately to just what sort of a film Anthropophagous 2000 is, but if you need me to fill you in a little, I’m happy to do so: It’s production values are infinitely more meager than anything a ordinary human would ever want to endure, the onscreen violence is cranked up as hard as it could possibly be cranked, and the end result isn’t very pleasant. BUT…. Those sorts of films have an audience, and if that’s what you’re into, go check it out. Despite it’s unlicensed origins, it can be had legally on DVD in the United States, courtesy of Massacre Video… So… Thanks, guys.

A-

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THE BEYOND!!!!

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The Beyond~ 1981, Lucio Fulci, Italy

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THE BEYOND!

The Beyond is the second film in Lucio Fulci’s semi-official “Seven Gates of Hell” Trilogy, which is the very definition of squandered opportunity. SEVEN gates of Hell TRILOGY? Come on, dude. What’s the deal? We still got, like, four more gates of hell out there somewhere.

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What kind of person tells us he has seven gates to hell, and then only shares three? Fucked up.

Regardless, The Beyond is often thought of as one of Fulci’s best films, and that’s a reputation that I think is well deserved. This is, indeed, a good movie.

The plot really isn’t that impressive, though. It’s basically just a straight line that connects our protagonist’s introduction, with her eternal damnation. In short, she inherits a hotel (that’s good!) and wouldn’t ya know it, it’s built over one of the Earth’s seven, hidden entrances to Hell (that’s bad).  Immediately everything is really, really horrible, and then she goes to hell forever. A lot of secondary characters die, and that’s the movie.

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Awesome.

Just like with Suspiria, the weak plot isn’t really an issue, we didn’t come to The Beyond with high expectations for an engrossing narrative. What makes this film truly great is it’s superb execution. Like many of Fulci’s films, The Beyond is straught up dream like, and in fact, most of this shit just flat out doesn’t make sense at all. Is this a deliberate abuse of your suspension of disbelief, or evidence of incompetence on the part of the director? I tend to believe it’s the former, but either way, Fulci plays it straight, and when you experience the many frustrating lapses in basic logic alongside the film’s near constant air of menace, the end result is a wildly effective movie for those who have the patience to invest in it. The Beyond is scary for reasons that you can’t quite pin point, which seems to be a common goal amongst the Italian horror maestros of yesteryear. Fulci nailed it this time.

Good ol’ Lucio’s eye for cinematography is here in full force as well, this is a film that probably has a lot more love and care put into it’s aesthetic than you may notice if you don’t know what to look for. When Fucli was playing at the top of his game, he put out movies that got more beautiful the longer you picked at them, and that certainly is the case here. It’s also extremely gory, which is great, The Beyond is a full fledged Video Nasty, folks, and understandably so. The main jam here is lingering. Just lingering! This movie likes to find really, really gross shit, and then just rub your face in it for much longer than is required to get the point across. For gorehounds, that makes this movie well worth the cost of admission alone. For fans of Italian splatter cinema, it’s hard to argue against The Beyond as a must see.

Small gripe; People often call The Beyond a zombie film, which I think it ill-advised. Yes, there are zombies in this movie, but there’s also a whole lot of other stuff going on too. Calling this a zombie movie is sorta like saying that E.T. is a movie about bicycles. Even worse, if you’re looking for zombies specifically, this might leave you feeling underwhelmed, as they are most certainly not this film’s primary focus. If it’s the undead you crave, have a gander at this list for recommendations, because The Beyond really isn’t going to get you what you’re looking for.

Additionally, the movie also bares many traits which are very much typical of European productions of the era, but which also tend to turn off mainstream American horror fans, who expect a more accessible Hidden Gateway To Hell experience. Slow pacing, obnoxious English dubbing, and a sometimes aggravatingly negligent narrative, these are all here, and in spades. If you haven’t seen a lot of these films before, then you might have trouble with The Beyond. You need to think of these films like a hot tub; dip your toes in first to test the temperature, and then lower yourself in as your body adjusts to the warmth. If you just dive in, you’re gonna get burned.

Otherwise, The Beyond is absolutely great, and a highlight of Fulci’s epic filmography.

A+

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VIOLENT SHIT: THE MOVIE

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Violent Shit: The Movie~ 2015, Luigi Pastore, Italy

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Sigh<… You’d think by now that I’d have learned a thing or two about not getting my hopes up, but when I read the announcement for this project, it got my attention. It’s such a bizarre turn of events;Violent Shit, the quintessential no-budget German splatter film, was being remade- and by the Italians no less! The new film would have a higher budget (not saying a lot), better production value (saying even less), and would sport an original soundtrack by legendary composer Claudio Simonetti! And if that doesn’t float your boat, it would even feature Euro-horror icon Giovanni Lombardo Radice (AKA John Morghen) in a central role! Holy damn, how could I not want to see this movie?

I’m not crazy about the Violent Shit films (I kinda hate them), but this is tantamount to humanity entering some totally bizarre cinematic echo chamber. Violent Shit was clearly influenced heavily by the Video Nasties that came before it, and now we have this imitation video nasty being made in Violent Shit’s image more than twenty five years later, as if the original movie was just a fan film based on something that didn’t exist yet. At the very least, it looked like this could lend some legitimacy to the franchise, and it would very clearly be worth checking out. So, suffice to say, I preordered the Blu Ray. Will I ever learn?

No, no I won’t. it should go without saying that for all the excitement this strange stage in the evolution of the Violent Shit series may have generated, you can save yourself the trouble; Violent Shit: The Movie is easily the worst film in the entire franchise. It’s kind of amazing that that’s even possible, but here we are. Amazing things happen everyday.

THE PLOT~ When a series of bizarre and brutal murders begin to occur throughout Rome, German authorities send a detective from Hamburg to cooperate with Italian police in investigating what they fear may be the return of legendary German super murderer Karl The Butcher. Naturally, our two detectives waste no time in their investigation to uncover the mysterious truth behind Karl’s return, and to stop the killer before he strikes again. That’s only the first half of the movie, however, after that, the film changes its mind and decides that it wants to be about Giovanni Lombardo Radice’s Satanic coke party, and all of the work the film did in it’s first half establishing characters and plot is tossed in the toilet and discarded forever. We see some sleazy Italians have sex, Karl makes a few brief appearances, and is then casually decapitated in someone’s backyard like it ain’t no thing, and then the fucking movie is over and Luigi Pastore laughs maniacally inside his ornate, cavernous mansion, because he knows you just watched his shitty movie and he has your money, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Holy smokes. This franchise deserved better. I can’t believe I’m saying that, but it really did. It’s probably as good at time as any to remind you what the original Violent Shit looked like:
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Yeah, it looked like garbage, complete and utter garbage, because that’s what it was. It was the product of a handful of German kids dicking around with a VHS camcorder on the weekends, and somehow, the world decided that this was a movie, and now people own copies of it on friggin’ DVD. Even this, meager as it was, was a better experience than what Pastore has done with the Violent Shit franchise.

In fact, why is this even a Violent Shit movie? It’s not even that violent! It’s a complete waste of the license. Karl The Butcher is basically delegated to the role of a party favor, in simple point of fact, this is a complete under-utilization of the Violent Shit brand. This movie is really just about Giovanni and his weird antique collecting/Devil worshiping shit that he’s into, which would be okay, since I do like seeing Radice back again, but damn it, you guys. You probably should have made SOME KIND of effort to make your Violent Shit movie a VIOLENT SHIT movie. Seems like that would obviously be important. I really can’t tell you how profoundly short this movie comes insofar as delivering what is expected of it. The only other franchise reboot I can think of that shit the bed to this dramatic of a degree is actually Leprechaun Origins, which is a Leprechaun movie that somehow forgot to put the Leprechaun in it. Yeah, that was actually worse… But still.

Violent Shit the Movie isn’t just bad, it’s puzzlingly bad. It’s frustrating, pointless, and every mistake it makes is so painfully obvious that it actually makes the experience of watching it irritating in ways which surpass the natural unpleasantness one would experience when sitting through a crappy movie. Violent Shit The Movie is the sort of bad that demands retaliation, like after having seen it, you feel like you’ve been wronged on a personal level. Truly, hell holds a special place for Luigi Pastore.

Oddly enough, Andreas Schnaas’ Anthropophagus 2000, his semi-illegal remake of Joe D’Amato’s 1980 video nasty, is, while still shitty, a much better experience, overall. Apparently, converting Italian to German works a lot better than the other way around.

F

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BLOOD FEAST!

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Blood Feast ~ 1963, Herschell Gordon Lewis, USA

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Clocking in at just over an hour, and with a reported budget of only $24,500, Blood Feast is the achievement that would forever enshrine Herschell Gordon Lewis as a name revered amongst horror aficionados the world over. While on first inspection, the lion’s share of this film sucks like friggin’ crazy, it actually can’t be overstated how ahead of it’s time Blood Feast really was. Often cited as the first ever legitimate gore film, this movie began a period of Lewis’ professional life where he would pioneer a new level of blood and guts based exploitation, and would eventually earn the honorary title “The Godfather of Gore.” Today, Blood Feast is over 50 years old, and is still far gnarlier and more explicit than most modern horror films. Time to step up your game, Hollywood.

THE PLOT~ Fuad Ramses, caterer, religious fanatic and serial teenage girl dismemberer, opens up a highly regarded catering business in what appears to be a sexless episode of Mad Men. Knowing that America is the land of religious freedom, he takes advantage of his newly acquired civil liberties and beings to horribly mutilate the shit out of young women- you know- for Ishtar. Can the police stop him before he finishes doing whatever the hell it is he’s trying to achieve? Hell yeah, but first a bunch of girls get the shit murdered out of them, and we watch it all in off-puttingly drawn out sequences of next-level motion picture violence.

How violent and bloody is Blood Feast? Well, today, the vilest, more despicable low budget splat merchants still use this as a benchmark, and I imagine John Waters probably thought it was the best thing ever when he was 16. So, it’s pretty bad.

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Lewis often said that he considered himself a business man, not an artist, so he viewed his motion picture work as an entirely commercial endevour. Kudos for honesty, but this attitude is reflected in every aspect of Blood Feast’s production, this is an artless, by the numbers motion picture that put very little energy into appeasing film theorists. Start to finish, Blood Feast is plagued with boring compositions, “just enough to get it done” dialog, horrendous acting, and thick, red acrylic paint substituting for blood. All of this juxtaposed against the disturbingly retro quaintness of the early 1960’s makes this film feel like some form of Satanic kitch, like a 1950’s themed burger joint operated by Jason Voorhees. The weird thing is that I wouldn’t want it any other way, if the acting were actually good, it would probably be really, really disturbing. Blood Feast is definitely a “bad” film if you hold it up to any artistic scrutiny, but it just feels so right. This is the humble birth of gore cinema, if it didn’t sort of suck, wouldn’t that just feel inappropriate somehow?

 

Additionally, time has been very kind to Blood Feast. The novelty of an early 1960’s gore film existing at all is tremendous, but its clumsy production, lousy story, and prehistoric tropes make the film markedly more fun today than it has ever been before, by all accounts, this is a movie that will continue to gain entertaining value as it becomes more and more antiquated. There’s just so much to laugh at! In the movie, one of our would-be mutilation victims is dating a policeman, who appears to be in his late 40’s- and that’s weird, because I think she’s in high school. Also, at the end of the picture, our bad guy dies in exactly the same way that The Shredder does in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, so I really want to believe that Eastman and Laird owned a battered VHS copy of Blood Feast back in the 80’s. Really, I want that to be true.

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There’s really no argument to be had for Blood Feast’s artistic merit. It wasn’t better than other gore films, it was just “first,” but that’s still important. At the end of the day, people don’t like Lewis’ output for its artistic merit anyway, and Blood Feast is a fun movie that deserves the worship it receives.

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ZOMBIE!!!!

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ZOMBIE~ Lucio Fulci, 1979 – Italy

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As of 2015, zombies are super, super boring. That well is dry, there’s nothing left to harvest, the market is flooded with garbage, and we really need to move on to something else. Let’s do werewolves for a while, or something, anything else. We can come back to zombies in like, fifteen years, because honestly, I  cannot handle Zombieland 2, you guys. Please, don’t make me do it.

Actually, it’s worth pointing out that this has happened before, this is the third time that Western pop culture has been just gaga for friggin’ zombies. It’s super ironic, zombie movies rise up, become overwhelmingly numerous, die off, lay dormant for a few decades, only to rise and repeat the cycle again. I guess everything sorta does that… But anyway, this most recent cycle has been pretty lame overall, so if you count yourself as a zombie fan, it would be a good idea to go back and check out some of the classics from previous eras. Assuming you’ve seen the three original George Romero Dead films (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead,) this one right here would be my recommend for the next zombie flick you need to see. For more, check out this list I published some time ago for a couple extra recommends.

Released initially as an unofficial sequel to Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (which was called Zombie, or ZOMBI in Europe), Zombie (AKA Zombi 2) is a damn masterpiece. This was a better time for horror film in general, especially in Europe, where Italy and Spain really seemed to have the market cornered on trashy splatter films for a few years, some of which didn’t even suck. Zombie is one such film, and it truly is enjoyably gruesome, so much so, in fact, that it wound up on the U.K. Video Nasites hit list back in the 1980’s. Never fear, however, nowadays the movie is widely unavailable in it’s raw, uncut glory, so grab yourself a copy and stick it to the Queen of England for trying to keep rad movies out of the hands of the peasantry.

THE PLOT~ When a seemingly abandoned yacht drifts into The New York City Harbor, police make a grisly discovery which kicks off an island hopping adventure for a Newspaper reporter (played by Ian McCulloch) and the daughter of a missing scientist (played by Tisa Farrow.) Along the way, they’ll face many challenges, including an endless legion mindless, man-eating corpses, possessed of an unstoppable urge to kill, as well as the formidable winds of the open sea, which threaten to undermine the complex infrastructure of Ian McCulloch’s elaborate comb-over hair-do.

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Looks good, bro.

The movie is awesome start to finish, but it does have several especially well known sequences in it, two of which I think are worth mentioning here. Firstly, this movie features Fulci’s most infamous eye gouging scene ever, which, believe it or not, is a pretty prestigious accolade, because Fulci really liked to fuck people’s eyeballs up in his movies. He seemed to understand that folks really got super freaked out by that sort of thing, so anytime he wanted to make an audience to squirm even more than usual, eyeball destruction was one of his favorite go-to resources. Awesome. This one is pretty gnarly, and the British censors really didn’t like it. It’s a true highlight.

That scene is pretty great, but the second sequence I want to mention is more than great, it’s the stuff of legend. I’m going to break it down for you:

So, to start with, it takes place on a boat, far out in the ocean. We have not yet found our mysterious island, so there’s some tension built into the sequence from the beginning; Will we locate our destination? Will we not? Then, for reasons I do not remember and which are not at all important, it is decided that one of our female characters is going to go for a dive, and she’s going to do this wearing almost no clothing whatsoever. I take great care not to appear sexists in my writing, but if we are being candid, a huge cross section of Zombie’s audience is going to respond to that in a pretty favorable way, so it’s for sure worth a mention. Anyway, so we’ve got our mostly naked lady swimming around in this cool tropical, ocean setting, and then holy shit, suddenly there’s a big ol’ shark zooming up on her! She’s super scared, one minute she’s just swimming around, minding her own business, and the next, a freakin’ shark shows up. So far so good, right? Well, friends, it ain’t over yet. While hiding amongst a rad reef, hoping to escape the hungry snout of her menacing aquatic adversary, our frightened scuba-diving nudist happens upon another terrifying denizen of the deep; a mother fucking underwater zombie!!! We don’t know how this guy got down here, or how many other aqua zombies might be lurking about, but we do know one thing; Zombie is a film in which there is a sequence that features all of the following elements simultaneously:

A) An attractive, topless woman
B) A fucking shark
AND
C) A damn zombie, who is underwater for some reason.

And it’s a real shark! It might even be a real zombie, honestly, I wouldn’t put it past them. And they fight! You should all be ordering Zombie Blu Rays off of Amazon.com right now, even if you already own Zombie on Blu Ray. If you’re not, it’s safe to say that you and I will never truly be able to understand one another, though I am willing to try. This is, almost definitely, the single best use of the motion picture medium ever in human history, and if you cry a little bit the first time you watch it, please, don’t be embarrassed, that’s a perfectly natural reaction.

Plus, the rest of the movie is also super, super awesome. Zombie is a high water mark from the “Yes I’m grumpy, but I still give a shit” phase of Fulci’s career, so the production is quite competent, and even artfully executed at times. It features excellent photography, impressive special effects (for the late 70’s), a boss-ass theme song, and more than enough graphic, zombie related violence to please any seasoned horror fan who hasn’t already seen this movie two thousand times (assuming that someone like that even exists.)

Really, the only thing about this full blown super-classic that I can say which isn’t straight-up, glowing praise is that I have shown the film to lots of people before, and I am sometimes surprised when it fails to hold their interest. For many mainstream, American cinema-goers, the pacing and trappings of Euro-cinema can often prove challenging in unexpected ways. If you’re not used to this style of film, you may find yourself getting bored, though I cannot fathom how. For fans of Euro-sleaze, however, Zombie carries my highest recommendation, and I even encourage less seasoned zombie enthusiasts to give it a try. Truthfully, if you think you like zombies, you should WANT to see this.

A+

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